Thor 2 opens on November 6, 2013 (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Fake, but cool:

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Road to Endgame Revisit #9:
And now we come to what might be my least favorite MCU movie of them all. Not because it's a terrible movie -- it's perfectly adequate filmmaking -- but because there's nothing about it that really distinguishes it and makes it stand out from the back as its entity. If the MCU were a television series, Thor: The Dark World would be a filler episode. There are movies in the cinematic universe that are probably worse, but they're more interesting even in their shortcomings.

(Side note: While Disney had been distributing the films for a while now, this was the first MCU movie not to open with the Paramount logo at the beginning.)

The problems start with the opening prologue, narrated by Odin. We get a summary of the conflict between Asgard and the Dark Elves, which evidently predate the known universe. There is a conflict between Odin's father, Bor, and Malekith -- a Dark Elf hellbent on genocide to wipe out the universe and return things to the primordial blackness in which the Dark Elves evidently ruled unchallenged. The mechanism for this genocide is the Aether, the Reality Stone in a liquefied and/or vaporous from with the power to turn matter into anti-matter.

Director Alan Taylor was hired after directing six well-regarded episodes of "Game of Thrones". If Kenneth Branagh's mandate for the first film was to make Thor Shakespearean, it seems pretty clear that Taylor's mandate was to make Thor more like "Game of Thrones". This he does, to mixed results.

One of the driving forces of "Game of Thrones" is the rich, complex, meticulous history and mythology that George R. R. Martin has conceived of and mapped out for Westeros and the surrounding lands and peoples. Thor: The Dark World treats the Asgardian mythology with the same solemnity and respect, but the problem is that it's all complete nonsense. Instead of being a comprehensive, complex, and well thought out history, it's developed only just as far as the needs of the plot require. It all feels flimsy and cardboard-like. The reverence thus works against the picture, highlighting rather than obscuring that particular shortcoming.

It's interesting that Loki's reintroduction, being brought into the throne room in chains, was relatively late addition. According to the audio commentary (with Taylor, Tom Hiddleston, producer Kevin Feige, and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau) the scene was originally written for an ancillary tie-in comic book that was to be released as part of the marketing and publicity push for the movie. Once they saw the scene on the page, they realized it needed to be in the movie. It really reintroduces the crucial dynamic between Loki and his adoptive mother Frigga.

The first Thor suffered from the problem in its first half of long, increasingly boring scenes of our heroes fighting endless numbers of indistinguishable baddies. That problem is more prevalent here, first in the prologue and then a little later on with Thor, the Warriors Three, and Lady Sif pacifying the lesser realms after a period of instability resulting from the destruction of the Bifrost. It's nice to get little glimpses of more of the Nine Realms after the first movie focused on Earth, Asgard, and Jotunheim. But the action sequences don't have any real stakes, and there's never really any doubt that our heroes will prevail.

One area where Marvel Studios's desire to bring more of the "Game of Thrones" aesthetic does pay off is with the expansion of Asgard. The Dark World maintains pretty perfect continuity with the design and layout established by Bo Welch for the first film, but whereas that film's Asgard scenes took place mostly in the loft grand ceremonial spaces atop Asgard, this film zooms in on the lower and more residential areas of Asgard, the places that aren't featured prominently in the establishing shots. Production designer Charles Wood, in the first of six MCU movies he's worked on to date, takes Welch's broad strokes and starts filling in the details with spaces that feel lived in with a reality and weight and history to them. Morgenthau, who was the DP on two of Taylor's "Thrones" episodes, lights Asgard very much like King's Landing: Naturalistic, but heightened.

In my revisiting of Thor, I noted that if Kenneth Branagh was hired to bring a Shakespearean dimension to that film, I found his contributions that he wasn't hired for far more interesting. The same is true of Taylor with The Dark World. I particularly love the portrayal of London, and how it contrasts with Asgard. Asgard is an advanced interstellar civilization and Earth by comparison is primitive little back water. But the look of the film subverts that, with Asgard feeling very old and traditional and rustic with warm, organic colors while the Earth scenes feel very modern and sleek, with a cooler, more artificial palette. The sequence in the abandoned warehouse is a particular standout. We've seen a lot of scenes over the years set in old, abandoned warehouses. But they don't feel like this one. The warehouse is apparently the old factory where EMI used to press vinyl, and it has a very different aesthetic to the class movie warehouse. We're used to see pale but dirty little street urchins in London movies, but the three kids here look like modern England, with two kids of South Asian descent and one kid of African descent, all dressed like contemporary schoolchildren on the weekends. The gags with the altered gravity are effective, and the payoff with the car keys and shoes, in particular, are a lot of fun.

Stellan Skarsgård as Erik Selvig is one of the few areas where The Dark World is an undeniable improvement over the first film. From his introduction, at Stonehenge completely naked ranting and raving to the evening news, to his lecture in the psych ward, everything with him and his character is pure gold.

Kat Dennings continues to be a lot of fun as Darcy. I love that she has her own intern who's constantly a step behind in this movie, and that just by being present for so many consequential events she is, at this point, a character who knows things and has a much firmer grasp of the bigger picture than your average twentysomething off the street. Her brief initial encounter with Thor is great: "How's space?" "Space is fine."

Natalie Portman's finest bit of acting in either Thor movie is when Thor takes Jane to Asgard via the Bifrost. Jane Foster, the astrophysicist who theorized about the existence of Einstein-Rosen Bridges, gets to experience one firsthand. And the look of absolute wonder on Natalie Portman's face during the journey is very affecting.

When Thor and Jane arrive in Asgard, it's a reversal of the "stranger in a strange land" dynamic from the first film. There, Thor was the fish out of water among humans on Earth. Here, Jane is the outsider among Asgardians on Asgard. I love the arrogance and condescension shown toward her. And I love the way she challenges their assumptions and dismissiveness toward humans; their last meaningful experience with humanity was in the late tenth century. Our species has come a long way in the intervening millennium, and Jane's scientific background leaves her particularly well prepared to understand the marvels of Asgard.

Languages are an interesting thing in this movie, and in the cosmic side of the MCU in general. There is quite a bit of subtitled dialogue in the Dark Elves' native language. It might be the most subtitled dialogue in any of the Marvel movies. And yet everybody on Asgard speaks English. Why is that? Why do all of the aliens speak English?

Loki's decision to aid Malekith's top lieutenant in entering the palace, and Frigga ultimately dying as a result, is the probably the most important contribution this movie makes to the ongoing development of the MCU. It's the pivot point that takes Loki from being a villain to being an antihero. This evolution plays dividends in Ragnarok and Infinity War. Rene Russo got a bit more to do in this movie, with a nice sword fighting element to Frigga's last stand.

The viking funeral for Frigga was absolutely stunning. A wonderful moment of visual beauty in this film. I touched upon Morgenthau's cinematography easier, which I appreciated a lot more this time around that the first couple viewing. From a technical standpoint, Morgenthau split the difference between what was fast becoming Marvel Studios's standard look with Arri Alexa cameras and the 35mm anamorphic photography of the first Thor. This movie was shot primarily using Alexa cameras, but like the first film they used anamorphic lenses. This meant significantly greater vertical resolution.

I'm not sure the final climactic battle at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London entirely works. It's a beautiful location, and thematically being within close walking distance of the Old Royal Observatory (and thus the prime meridian) plays well. I admire that it's mostly a fight between Thor and Malekith, instead of another battle with thousands of nameless CG foot soldiers. And it's interesting that Earth technology turns out to be key to destroying this ancient being. But it just doesn't feel big enough, or satisfying enough. And the arbitrary nonsense of the convergence is highlighted by the prime meridian, which only is where it is because the British Empire was the foremost power in the world when the International Meridian Conference was convened to settle the matter once and for all. I was fascinated by the fighter jet, which goes through one of the holes in space-time and ends up in Vanaheim. I would love to know what happens next in that guy's story.

Another of Brian Tyler's scores that dominated Phase Two of the MCU. It's definitely more bombastic and in-your-face than Patrick Doyle's score for the first film. But it still wasn't very memorable for me. Serviceable without really standing out from the pack.

Connections to other parts of the MCU: Two stood out to me, one important and one fun. The fun one is Loki using his imaging technology to look like Captain America. Chris Evans was great in that brief cameo. The important one is the first actual appearance o fBenicio Del Toro as The Collector, and the reveal that the Tesseract was one infinity stone (Space Stone) and the Aether is another (Reality Stone).

 

[Jake Lipson]

There was an interview a few months back with Chris O'Dowd that I saw where the interviewer asked him if his character from Thor had survived the end of Infinity War, and O'Dowd didn't remember he had been in this movie.

https://screenrant.com/thor-dark-world-chris-odowd-cast/

That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the experience making the film, if O'Dowd could block it from his mind completely. Of course, it wasn't a very big role and if I recall correctly his main function was for Natalie Portman to reject him in favor of Thor. But still, you'd think an actor would be able to remember being in a Marvel movie.

The reason the Paramount logo appeared on The Avengers and Iron Man 3 but not on The Dark World was because Paramount's original distribution deal with Marvel (signed before the Disney purchase took place) was to have run through Iron Man 3. Disney bought Paramount out of the deal and started distributing on their own for The Avengers, but a condition of the buyout was that Paramount's logo would continue to appear on the films that they would have originally distributed. They also got to collect 8% of the gross on The Avengers and 9% of the gross on Iron Man 3 as a fee for not distributing the movies, which is a sweet deal if you can get it, since they didn't lift a finger on either of these films and still got paid what they would have gotten if they'd done work. Anyway, The Dark World was the first film which was greenlit by Disney without having initially been covered by the Paramount distribution deal.

I remember enjoying The Dark World fairly well when I saw it -- I wasn't bored by it -- but have not revisited it since the onetime theatrical release. I wouldn't be opposed to adding it to my collection, but among the MCU movies I don't have, it's not a priority for me to purchase this next.

 

[JimmyO]

This, and two other MCU movies are the only ones I haven't seen.

 

[Sam Favate]

It's true Alan Taylor was chosen because of his Game of Thrones connection (let's face it, GoT has been about the hottest property for several years now; everyone wants to replicate it for their project). But Patty Jenkins was the original choice to direct and would have been the first woman to direct a movie in the MCU. (An honor that went to Anna Boden, who co-directed Captain Marvel with Ryan Fleck.) Natalie Portman was annoyed when Jenkins left after two months, and showed it publicly. Portman stayed on, but really phoned it in. Jenkins' original idea for the movie was a "Romeo-and-Juliet-esque space opera that hinged on the separation of Thor and Jane Foster." There's a slight hint of this in the finished movie as Odin disapproves of Thor's relationship with Jane. You can read about it here: http://collider.com/patty-jenkins-thor-2-idea/

Of course, Jenkins went on to make a huge mark with Wonder Woman, so everyone came out a winner, in a way (except Natalie Portman, who hasn't been seen again in a Marvel movie).

As for why they speak English on Asgard and the Elves have subtitles: Besides Asgardians speaking English since their introduction in the comic books, having them speak English lets the audience identify with them, whereas having the aliens' language be incomprehensible gives them an alien feel. Old movie technique, but effective.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

One other minor frustration: I have this movie in a retailer-exclusive Steelbook with both the 3D Blu-Ray and the 2D Blu-Ray. But they used a three-disc case for a two-disc release, one disc on either side. With the 2D disc on the top of the stacked two-disc slot on the right, without another disc to protect it, there is a circle scraped into the information side of the 2D Blu-Ray where the non-existent third disc would have been held.

It caused the disc to crap out right as Thor and Jane arrive at Asgard. I was able to stop the disc, restart it, select the next chapter from the top menu, and then rewind to the problem area. Probably only around five seconds of the runtime were affected, but it's still frustrating that when you pay a premium for packaging, it actually ends up being less suited than the standard packaging.

As for why they speak English on Asgard and the Elves have subtitles: Besides Asgardians speaking English since their introduction in the comic books, having them speak English lets the audience identify with them, whereas having the aliens' language be incomprehensible gives them an alien feel. Old movie technique, but effective.

You're right of course; it just would have silenced the OCD in my brain if they'd given Jane a Potion of Understanding or something when she was on the diagnostic table to explain it away.

It makes sense to me that the Asgardian royal family would be fluent in just about every language, because they've been alive hundreds to thousands of years and it would be useful to speak the local languages of what Asgard views as essentially colonial territories under its dominion. So I don't have a problem with Thor on Earth speaking English. But presumably when they're on Asgard they're speaking their own (presumably proto-norsk) language, and the movie's just translating for us. English, while a West Germanic language at its root, evolved organically into its modern form long after the Battle of Tønsberg in 965 A.D.

 

[Sam Favate]

It makes sense to me that the Asgardian royal family would be fluent in just about every language, because they've been alive hundreds to thousands of years and it would be useful to speak the local languages of what Asgard views as essentially colonial territories under its dominion.

If Thor could study Groot (the language) in college (as he said in Infinity War), then your theory makes sense for all upper crust Asgardians.